MBE Only

Unlike MicroMash, which offered state-specific bar exam review materials for 26 states, MBE Edge, as the name suggests, is limited to Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) content. The course does not include state-specific materials, so don’t be misled by the order form that asks you to select the jurisdiction where you’re sitting for the bar exam.

I approached this course as someone who 1) is looking for bar exam review tools for use in the very near future (Eeep!), 2) doesn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for tape-recorded substance, and 3) has never tried out other bar review materials. Given this last part, I can’t provide insights on the comparative strengths of MBE Edge over another bar review course. But overall it satisfied my desire for easy access to substance with immediate feedback. Hard to say if it’s worth the $395 pricetag, but at least there’s unlimited access to a lot of questions—over 2,800, according to the MBE Edge site. (And is much more useful than paper flashcards, which might cost $200 for a half-dozen subjects.)

Technical Specs & Design

MBE Edge’s interface is pretty simple and intuitive, although the colors are a bit garish and some of the screen layouts are almost confusingly sparse. The Study Center Overview, which serves as the landing page for the course, is kind of text-heavy and just displays buttons for the same content as is available through the top navigation tabs.

It’s somewhat of a surprise that the course is Flash-based, foreclosing use on the iPad and other iOS devices. Yet the overall aesthetic of the MBE Edge homepage is more mobile-friendly, with ginormous text and buttons.

I was pleased that everything I encountered was formatted to display well on my 768-pixel high laptop screen. I tested it out using Chrome (the browser, not the OS). The site ran well on my Ubuntu netbook running Firefox as well, except that the Flash frame lacked a vertical scroll bar on my 600-pixel high screen, so it wasn’t really usable on the netbook. I’m hoping this is an early-release bug that’ll be remedied soon.

Substance

MBE Edge offers six subject areas (constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, real property, and torts) with 34 sub-topics. The self-study feature allows the user to create custom question sets based on topic and subtopic(s), with adaptive filters for questions the user has already answered correctly or incorrectly, or questions the user has marked for review. Study can be timed or untimed.

The “guided learning” mode displays questions based on past user responses, to focus on problematic questions. Incorrect and correct answers are displayed after each question. With self-study, the user can choose either Study Mode, where answers and explanations are provided after each question, or Practice Exam Mode, where the user answers all the questions, without answer feedback on each, and can “grade” the practice exam at the end and review individual questions.

There’s a glossary of legal terms in the software, too. This is nice and educational, but it’s frustrating that the glossary isn’t currently searchable. For that matter, keyword searching for the 2,800 questions would be nice, too (although you can search by question number).

Metrics

The software tracks all of your answers and can display this data nicely. Users can view a summary of how much time they’ve spent answering questions, the average time per question, percent of total material covered, and the percent of questions answered correctly so far. This information can be displayed in a chart, too, showing average time per question and percent correct by subject.

Overall: Good Content, Easy to Use, Reasonably Priced

For students and lawyers who need Multistate Bar Examination studying help, MBE Edge looks like a good choice, as long as you don’t hope to study on your iPad. There’s a free 30 day trial of MBE Edge on the site, so you check it out for yourself.

5 Comments

I remember using Micromash for some of my bar prep. Back in my day it was provided on five floppy disks (don’t laugh!). For me it was very effective. I’m glad to see that this has now evolved into a cloud-based system.

We keep a few of those old discs around the office to remind us of where we’ve come from…. I also keep some of the older books on my bookshelf. I should post some pics of the old materials on our blog….

Laura:

We tested the “glitch” with the scroll bar you uncovered in your review today. We were able to reproduce the issue in our testing environment that we gave you access to for review purposes, but could not reproduce it in the live version of the site – so it appears the issue was limited to the test servers.

I bought the micromash mbe questions online and my question is since the mbe edge has taken over from micromash, am I going to get the same materials or mbe questions that I already have from the micromash or is different and do I get a discount if I have to buy the mbe edge. The mbe has always been my problem and if you can help me that will be great. You may call me at 828 582-9529 because I need answers and I will like to speak with somebody if possible. Thank you, Moses.

This review refers to 2,800 questions. But anyone considering purchasing Multistate Edge should be aware that the program has apparently been changed, and is significantly more limited than it was at the time of this review. From an email received from Multistate Edge customer service on July 21, 2014:

“Recently, we made some changes to our Multistate Edge course. We now have a total of 600 NCBE released questions. We believe that the NCBE released only questions will be the best preparation for what you will actually see on the exam.”

Of course, the only reference I can find on their website as to how many questions the program includes is their suggestion in the FAQ that you budget 150-175 hours for the program.

Before you purchase the program, be aware that what the price amounts to $0.50 per question. Otherwise, you might feel like you got substantially less than you thought you were buying.